He described himself as a director, although he is not listed as one in Companies House records.

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Barr was previously a director of European Fine Wines Limited until it collapsed last July owing £2.8million, mainly to investors.

Two of his co-directors at this disaster were Scott Assemakis and David Evans.

They are each serving 11-year bans from acting as company directors for their roles at a £7million landbanking investment scam.

At the interview at the Blue Horizons offices in Guildford, Surrey, Barr ­promised a “life-changing role”, earning up to £4,000 a month for making 300 cold calls every day.

A leaderboard on the wall showed that clients have been hit for as much as £200,000 a time, one salesman bringing in a record of nearly £300,000 in one month.

The introductory talk was about selling fine wines, yet it’s hard to find any mention of wine on the website www.blueh.co.uk.

That site focuses mainly on selling storage units to investors, which supposedly earn income when sub-let to a firm called Store First, which then rents them to the public.

Store First is promoted by former Top Gear presenter Quentin Willson, who says in a promotional video that he’s always on the lookout for a good investment “like a ­guaranteed 8% in the first two years and up to 10% in years three and four”.

However one interviewer admitted during the recruitment day: “There is no such thing as a guaranteed ­investment.”

The company, which has also flogged carbon credits as investments, did not seem to care if its cold callers had any qualifications for giving investment advice – and Barr boasted they hadn’t even read the candidates’ CVs.

As for storage pods, the industry body Self Storage Association UK hired accountant Deloitte to look at the Store First business model.

That resulted in the Association warning last year: “It may yet prove to be the case that the rental returns being paid to investors are in fact being funded from the sale proceeds of new units, and not the operation of the self-storage business.”

In other words, it’s a pyramid scheme. Since the publication of that report, the Association says that it has been contacted by “numerous” investors saying that the returns don’t match the hype and you can only sell your storage units by “incurring huge losses”.

Quentin Willson told me: “I’ve always been led to believe that Store First customers are getting the returns promised otherwise I wouldn’t have appeared on their website.

“I have no involvement whatsoever with Store First apart from appearing on their website which was filmed over a year ago.”